


017 "picnic"

by wheel_pen



Series: Iron Man AU [17]
Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Fish out of Water, My Pepper is different, Pre-Iron Man, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-08
Updated: 2013-04-08
Packaged: 2017-12-07 22:34:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/753850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheel_pen/pseuds/wheel_pen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony, Pepper, Rhodey, and Rae attend the company summer picnic. Tony protests that Rae has no basis except her fevered imagination for suspecting that he and Pepper are romantically involved—other than getting dressed in front of each other, holding hands, feeding each other… Also Tony relates the story of taking Pepper to a weapons testing ground and realizing how affected she was by explosions. "Pepper. Loved. Fireworks. It was an unnatural love."</p>
            </blockquote>





	017 "picnic"

**Author's Note:**

> 1) My Pepper is very different from canon Pepper. Her personality/origin is very different; to separate her from canon Pepper I've given her a new last name and a different hair color.
> 
> 2) The bad words are censored. That's just how I do things.
> 
> 3) Stories are numbered in the order I wrote them, which isn't necessarily the order in which they occur. At some point I'll post a timeline.
> 
> I wrote this series after the first Iron Man movie came out. It's very AU but I hope you'll enjoy it anyway. I own nothing and appreciate the chance to play with these characters.

            So I guess the first time Rae saw me and Pepper together, she thought we were a couple. As in, A Couple. Which I was sure shocked her to no end—well, it would've shocked me, too, since I didn't do the 'girlfriend' thing.

            Pepper and I were at the local farmers' market one Saturday. Not one of my usual hang-outs, granted, but Pepper had been asking me where vegetables came from before they showed up at the grocery store, and this was all I could really think of. What could I say, I was an urbanite. So we decided to go to the farmers' market and look around at the homemade breads and fresh produce and tie-dyed shirts and hand-carved wooden giraffes and so forth. It was kind of fun, actually, though I was a little worried one of the peace-loving hippies would recognize me and start yelling obscenities. Peace-loving hippies don't like defense contractors, you know.

            At one point I bought some kind of flavored honey sticks and was teasing Pepper with them—basically learning the hard way not to get between Pepper and a source of sugar. That was when Rae must've seen us. I say 'must've' because she didn't actually come over and say hello. Now don’t get the wrong idea, I didn't think it was rude or anything—Rhodey wasn't with her at the time, and when he wasn't there we both tended to avoid each other. If I saw her out somewhere alone I wouldn't have gone out of my way to say hi either. That was the little tacit agreement we had, because Rae and I just really weren't on the same wavelength, and avoidance was better than having an argument that put Rhodey in the middle.

            So anyway, Rae must've seen me and Pepper horsing around, and then she went home and asked her husband who Tony Stark's new _girlfriend_ was and why didn't he tell her Tony even _had_ a girlfriend? This was what I heard from Rhodey later. But it was only Pepper. I think Rae just wasn't used to seeing me with a woman I could relax with, instead of actively hitting on. Couldn't blame her for that.

            So once they figured out she had only seen me with Pepper, Rhodey explained her true identity—apparently some 'Pepper stories' had already been through the Rhodes household. But Rae was a stubborn woman, I had to say. And she wasn't quite convinced Pepper and I weren't A Couple.

            Not too much later it was time for the Stark Industries company picnic, to which Rhodey and his wife were my guests (unfortunately the kids were at summer camp). They stopped by the house first and walked into the middle of a French farce—as usual I was running late and Pepper was anxious about it, because I'd told her there would be fireworks at the picnic. Pepper. Loved. Fireworks. It was an unnatural love. And even though the fireworks wouldn't be until after dark, and it was barely three now, she was still worried she would miss them. But I had gotten absorbed in something in the workshop and kept telling her 'five more minutes' until she became scary, then I had to rush through showering and dressing.

            So I called down for them to let themselves in, and the next thing I knew Rhodey was in my bedroom tapping his foot as impatiently as Pepper. "Oh, what are you worried about?" I asked nonchalantly. "It's _my_ company, after all. They aren't going to eat all the food before we arrive."

            "They're going to eat all the food before we arrive?" I heard Pepper ask in a worried tone.

            "I said they _aren't_ ," I corrected her, then—"Hey, turn around!" That was to a slightly shocked Rhodey, since Pepper had wandered in clad only in underwear and a bra. After, presumably, traipsing past the living room where Rae was.

            Granted, she was holding up two dresses. "Which should I wear?"

            I sighed in exasperation as I pulled on my shirt. "Pepper! Those are _ballgowns_. This is a _picnic_. We're going to be sitting on the _ground_."

            She wrinkled her nose in distaste. "On the _ground_?"

            "I thought you were going to research picnics," I reminded her. "Anyway, just wear that yellow dress Mary helped you pick out. It's in my closet." One of my secretaries had been charged with helping Pepper find some nice but summery dresses for more casual outings, since Pepper infinitely preferred formal settings.

            "Oh. Okay."

            So Pepper got dressed in my walk-in closet while Rhodey stared awkwardly at the wall and made small talk, and I tried to get dressed while still peering _into_ my walk-in closet. Obviously Pepper and I weren't too shy. As to how _her_ dress ended up in _my_ closet—yeah, I don't know, I didn't have a good reason for that. But in French farces there was never a good reason for _anything_. 

            Finally we headed downstairs, where Rae—no doubt burning with curiosity about the half-naked woman—was waiting. I ended up behind Pepper on the stairs, where I noticed—"Pepper! Hold still! We've talked about zippers before. Are you regressing or what?" I asked, zipping up the back of her dress.

            "This new piece of clothing is confusing," she complained.

            "Hey, you wanna check _my_ zipper?" I smirked, just as Rae looked around the corner.

            "Honey!" Rhodey said a bit too loudly, trying to cut me off. "This is Pepper, Tony's assistant. Pepper, this is my wife, Rae."

            "Rhodey's wife, Rae," I murmured in Pepper's ear, not sure if the formal introduction by Rhodey would be sufficient for Rae to show up in Pepper's universe. And I didn't want to take the chance of offending Rae, since I managed to do that inadvertently so often. 

            The two women shook hands. "Hello, Tony," Rae greeted me with admirable politeness. "That’s a very nice shirt." She always tried to open with some kind of compliment.

            "Thanks," I replied with a grin. "Pepper hates it. Don't you, Pep?"

            She had picked up the designer wicker basket of picnic accessories specifically purchased for this event and was trying to herd us out the door. "It's very _striped_ ," she confirmed of the shirt. Pepper didn't like stripes.

            "You think it makes me look fat, don't you?" I teased.

            " _Yes_ ," she answered, in a manner that could only be described as _saucy_. I laughed in surprise and smacked her a-s as she went by me. I didn't really think about it, I just _did_ it, which was sort of typical for me. And Pepper didn't seem to mind. But later Rhodey told me how his wife's eyebrows practically shot straight up through the ceiling. What could I say, that was how we rolled in my house. You called someone fat, you got spanked. That was my new rule, anyway.

            So we all piled into the car and Happy started driving us. Yes, I was taking an oversized, chauffeur-driven vehicle to a picnic. I had a good reason, though (of course)—when I drove I had only one speed, one which experience had taught us Rae did not appreciate. You see how many compromises I made to keep my pal happy? Not to say Rae didn't compromise, too, because she did—many people had told me she was an all-around great person, but when we were together she compromised enough to hide it. Completely.

            There was a brief silence in the car that threatened to turn awkward. Pepper was poking at her phone again, so I snatched it from her and set it aside. "Stop working and pay attention to our guests," I instructed her. She folded her hands in her lap and fixed the Rhodeses with an intense, anticipatory stare, as if waiting for them to do something interesting. I sighed and realized this might be more difficult than I had thought. "Er—Rae teaches fourth grade," I offered to my lovely assistant.

            "Oh," Pepper replied. "Fourth grade what?"

            Everyone blinked. "Children," Rae replied after a moment, clearly uncertain about what she was dealing with.

            "Oh," Pepper repeated, but with a sympathetic tone. "Well, I suppose _someone_ has to. What kind of job prospects are there for fourth-grade children?"

            I had more experience dealing with Pepper's universe than anyone else, but this was a tough one. Finally after some quick mental contortions I realized what she was getting at, insane though it was. "Pepper! They're not grades like—grades of coal or something." I figured she was used to reading manufacturing reports, so maybe that was what she was going by. "You finish first grade, you go on to second, then third, then fourth—it's a progression!"

            "Ohhhh," with sudden clarity (I hoped). "I'm sorry, I misunderstood." Not that she seemed embarrassed at all.

            "It's alright," Rae assured her, but _I_ thought it was a little over-the-top, even for Pepper.

            "Good G-d, Pepper, was your mom on crack when she was pregnant with you?" I demanded sarcastically.

            I heard someone from the other side of the car admonish me, but all Pepper did was frown slightly. "I'm sure there were _some_ imperfections in the flooring, sir."

            I stared at her, mystified, and then Rae started to laugh. Normally I didn't like anyone laughing at Pepper except me and a select few friends; but Rae was the _wife_ of a friend, and anyway, she was laughing pleasantly, not meanly. "You are _so_ funny, Pepper," she remarked. "It's so refreshing to find an assistant of Tony's with a sense of humor."

            I wasn't quite sure what that meant, but it sounded like a dig. "Well, you know, that's why I hired her."

            Pepper frowned at me. "You said you hired me because I had nice—"

            I cleared my throat to cut her off. "So, er, Pepper was homeschooled, you see," I announced, although as far as I knew this was a total lie. "So she's a little shaky on the normal education system." I ignored Rhodey smirking at me behind his hand. "Why don't you, uh, tell her a little about what you do?" I suggested to Rae, who was happy to oblige.

            Finally we reached the picnic grounds. Pepper was given back her phone, and the hunt for a good spot began. After much deliberation among the three of us—Pepper stood poking at her phone and holding the basket—we chose a comfortable spot in the shade near the food. "Okay, gimme the basket," I told Pepper. She handed it over. "J---s C----t!" I exclaimed as the picnic basket pulled me down like an anchor.

            "Heavy?" Rhodey asked dryly.

            "Not at all," I assured him, giving Pepper a glare.

            We spread the blanket out on the ground and tried to get settled. I pushed Pepper's knees down—discreetly, for me—so she didn't flash the rest of the picnic crowd. "Sit like Rae does," I whispered in her ear, my hand still on her leg. I supposed it was tough to figure out how to sit on the ground in a dress—I'd never tried it, personally. But it did give me the opportunity to whisper in her ear and put my hand on her leg.

            The first couple hours of the picnic were always about networking, and I was the apex of the net. While the kids ran around playing with frisbies and water guns, their parents ran around playing their _own_ kind of games, schmoozing with whatever bigshots they could. A picnic was far more casual and egalitarian than, say, a cocktail reception or a $500-a-plate charity dinner, so many of the little people tended to jump on their rare opportunity to socialize with those at the top.

            And Pepper always made me look good at these things. Of course I had an excellent memory myself, but Stark Industries had thousands of employees; I couldn't possibly remember them _all_. Pepper could. That personnel directory apparently took up the mental storage space that _I_ devoted to charm and charisma. Together, we were extremely impressive—whenever Pepper saw someone heading towards us she would whisper to me their name, the names of their spouse and kids, the department they worked in, and any other notable facts. Then I would smile and shake hands with Lauren and her husband Jason, greet their daughters Olivia and Beatrice, and remark on how Lauren's team had the best second-quarter numbers of any in Sales. Then the happy family could wander off, dazzled by my attention to them, and I could flop back down on the blanket and whine about wanting a beer (which was not served here).

            "Su Chung, head of Design, and his wife Tran," Pepper prodded me.

            "I _know_ who Su Chung is, I see him all the time," I hissed back, a welcoming smile on my face as I waved the man over. Pepper said something that was not in English. "What?" I asked her, startled. Had she had a psychotic break and started speaking in tongues?

            She repeated the phrase. "Say that to his wife," she instructed me. I barely had time to check the pronunciation with her again before my head designer appeared at our picnic blanket.

            "Dude, how's it going?" I asked him, feeling a more casual approach was appropriate with a person I considered a friend of a sort. He had worked for the company for several years and put up with many unintelligible and seemingly insane design ideas, some of which came to me when I was quite intoxicated in the middle of the night but felt I was on the edge of brilliance and needed a witness to it. And he had never appeared to be anything but friendly and helpful and occasionally groggy, so I figured he deserved some special commendation. We chatted a couple minutes, I pointed out Rhodey (whom he had met) and Rae (whom he probably had met a couple times a while ago), and then as things were winding down Pepper gave me the signal and I said my little phrase. I felt a little bit like a toy monkey, or maybe like I was three years old again and being made to recite the long poems I'd inadvertently memorized. Except this was only, like, three words. The audience seemed equally appreciative, however.

            "What did I just say to her?" I asked Pepper, once the couple had left and I had flopped back down on the blanket and whined about wanting a beer.

            "You said, 'Have a nice day' in Vietnamese," she reported.

            "Hmm, that was very polite of me," I decided. "You speak Vietnamese?" She indicated yes. "Hey, maybe you _are_ smart."

            "That's very kind of you to say, sir," Pepper replied, while Rhodey rolled his eyes at me.

        Around five or so the food was served. "Here you are, sir," Pepper announced, kneeling beside me with a plate of potato salad, beans, fried chicken, and other picnic-type foods. Of course, we were eating these foods off real china plates, conveyed in the basket Pepper had been toting around. Paper plates seemed inherently untrustworthy to me, however much they conveyed the 'picnic' spirit. 

            "Where's the—" She handed me a real metal fork. "And the—" She wedged a glass of soda carefully into the ground beside me. "What about—" She started to tuck a cloth napkin into the collar of my shirt. I snatched it down. "Thank you, Pepper, I'll just hold it," I informed her with some annoyance.

            "If you think that's wise, sir," she intoned. Clearly, _she_ didn't.

            "Well where's _your_ plate?" I needled. "Or is the truck backing up even as we speak?"

            "Tony!" Rhodey always chided me when I made fun of how much Pepper ate. Of course, then she produced a plate groaning under massive piles of coleslaw, mashed potatoes, and fruit salad. Come to think of it, Pepper's portion size was probably the reason I didn't trust paper plates anymore. 

            "Feel free to go back for seconds when you're done," I deadpanned.

            "Okay." Pepper opened the picnic basket again and pulled out her canister of sugar, which she proceeded to sprinkle across her entire plate.

            "Sweet tooth," I said to the staring Rae.

            I thought the meal went well, with only the occasional reminder to Pepper—"Don't eat the bones this time," for example, when she picked up a chicken leg. I didn't even notice how sharply Rae was keeping an eye on me, not until I thought about it later, anyway. You had to remember, sending Pepper to fetch things for me, sharing food with her, and letting her wipe specks of mayonnaise off my face were perfectly normal activities for me. Granted, I'd never done any of that with my previous assistants—the thought of Ol' Blue Gill feeding me a bite of blueberry pie kind of made me want to puke. Well, I was sure I made them fetch things, but they weren't allowed on the blanket with _friends_. So I _suppose_ I could _kind of_ understand Rae's _surprise_ , but to be honest she was also kind of a busybody and liked to imagine connections that didn't exist sometimes.

            I mean, it would really take a huge stretch of the imagination to deduce romance from me lying on the blanket with my head in Pepper's lap while she fed me grapes, don't you think?

            A shadow fell across my face and somehow I just knew who it belonged to. "And how is our little king today?" asked Obadiah sardonically. (Occasionally, I used to get the feeling that I was one of those brilliant Roman boy emperors who was manipulated by his trusted yet condescending chief general. I should have listened to those feelings more.)

            "Didn't Faust sell his soul to the Devil so Helen of Troy could feed him grapes?" I replied randomly.

            "I suppose I'm the Devil in that scenario?" Obadiah surmised correctly, making himself comfortable.

            "Well you sure as h—l aren't Helen of Troy," I shot back.

            Pepper fed me another grape. "Helen of Troy cheated on her husband," she pointed out demurely.

            "Good point," Rae approved.

            "She also started a war," Rhodey added.

            "A boon to defense contractors across the ancient world," Obadiah cracked, and I laughed. He could be a rather cynical b-----d sometimes, but it saved me the trouble.

            "When are we going to have fireworks?" Pepper asked, her mind able to stay away from the subject for only so long.

            "Whenever you want, babe," I assured her mischievously. "Say the word and we'll head for the shrubbery." Someone kicked my ankle in disapproval.

            "I meant _real_ fireworks," Pepper persisted.

            There were several chuckles, mine among them. "Ouch. You know how to knock a guy's ego, Pepper."

            "I'm sorry, sir," she replied. "Would you like another grape?"

            Finally the moment came, as the sun set and the stars came out. Living out away from the city, I had a pretty good view of the night sky, free from the hindrance of streetlamps and smog. Not that I really took advantage of it, though. After dark I might have been doing many different things, but I probably wouldn't have been lying out on my back deck watching the stars. Unless of course that was just a euphemism. Anyway, we weren't all sitting in the park to watch the stars; we wanted to see some explosions!

            Pepper loved explosions. The first time I realized this was when I took her to a weapons testing ground in the middle of the desert to see a new smart missile in action. She didn't normally tag along to these things since there wasn't a lot of actual _work_ for her to do at them—they fell into the same category as, say, whitewater rafting trips, where she made all the arrangements then sent me off to enjoy myself. But I dragged her along this time for some reason—possibly just to irritate her, I don't remember.

            So we were sitting on the bleachers with the rest of the observers, with our earplugs, and they started firing the missiles. And Pepper got all _twitchy_ beside me. The last thing you wanted at a weapons testing ground was someone acting crazy, so I put my arm around her to make sure she stayed in her seat. I thought maybe she was scared or something—let's face it, having a missile explode in front of you was not a normal event for most people (in _this_ country, anyway) and sometimes it brought up weird impulses in people's minds, like running for cover or something. Well, I guess that wasn't really a _weird_ impulse when something exploded near you; but you're supposed to then realize that this was a very controlled environment and you were perfectly safe. Except some people didn't.

            So anyway, I had my arm around her, and she grabbed my leg and squeezed it. _Hard_. She was just kind of trembling all over, obviously making an effort to be even _that_ still, and every time a missile exploded, another tremor went through her body. I was actually really worried about her, wasn't even watching the test. Then I noticed that her cheeks were flushed and—well, look, a guy with as much experience as me could tell when a woman was enjoying something, and I meant Enjoying. I was pretty shocked when I first realized what was going on, because normally Pepper didn't express any kind of feeling like _that_. Or even seem to recognize that those feelings existed. But then I started grinning. Because Pepper was turned on by explosions. And I happened to be the biggest manufacturer of weapons—that exploded—in the country. And _I_ was turned on by Pepper. Thus another facet was added to our torturous little dance—but at least this time it was something _I_ could do to rattle  _Pepper_.

            Fireworks weren't as good as a missile exploding, of course, but they lasted longer and were more plentiful. "Aren't we going to move closer?" Pepper asked longingly.

            "No, we're fine here," I told her, pulling her down into my lap. "Don't want you misbehaving in public, do we?" I added in her ear, making sure all limbs were safely constrained. She gave me a disdainful look, as though she had no idea what I was referring to.

            So I suppose from an outside perspective, me holding Pepper tightly and whispering in her ear, in the dark, under the fireworks, might have looked a bit _leading_. Certainly there were other pairs around the park who were doing the same thing, and if I had bothered to look at them I might have assumed that pair was A Couple, too. But just because they _looked_ like A Couple didn't mean they _were_ A Couple, you know. Maybe they were just two people who were really close, and one totally lusted after the other but the other seemed to be about as non-sexual as, I don't know, the Pope (a modern one, not one of those who had mistresses and kids), except of course when it came to fireworks so the first one was basically exhibiting a horrible masochistic streak at the moment by _not_ just knocking the other one into the grass and making out with her then and there. Since the other one presumably wouldn't appreciate it later, when the fireworks were over. So, you see, that could absolutely have been what was going on, and you shouldn't have just assumed they were simply dating.

            The rest of the fireworks scene wasn't something that could really be put into words. Maybe one of Pepper's romance novelists could have taken a crack at it—one of those pieces roiling with sexual tension early in the book, when the main characters had some kind of seemingly insurmountable obstacle keeping them apart, yet were sparking and popping with chemistry anyway. Like, he was a brilliant, wealthy, caddish man of the world and she was a beautiful innocent thrust into a world of intrigue by an unscrupulous relative. That was one of my favorite plotlines, anyway.

            After the fireworks there was time for just a little more socializing and schmoozing, although the darkness made this a bit more challenging. I kept firm hold of Pepper's hand, since I was afraid she might wander off in the dark towards the food and get lost. By the time we got back to the car I was oddly exhausted.

            "I think you got too much sun, sir," Pepper diagnosed, looking down at me. I had again positioned my head in her lap, because it was comfortable.

            "Well, not all of us want that deathly white look," I quipped. Pepper never seemed to tan, or burn, no matter how long she was outdoors. "Do you, like, bathe in SPF 3500 or what?"

            She put her cool hand across my forehead. "I'm afraid you're becoming delirious, sir."

            "So the usual, then?" teased Rhodey. Rae just narrowed her eyes like a detective surveying a crime scene and said nothing.

 

            "I don't find any of your so-called _evidence_ convincing," I told Rhodey coldly as we ate lunch a few days later.

            "Hey, I'm just telling you how it looked," he smirked in return.

            I wanted to point out that was actually how it looked to his _wife_ , but that seemed like a guaranteed insult over a fine point. "Well anyway, so what?" I decided, a bit petulantly. "I mean, is there some _law_ that says I can't hold Pepper's hand without being her—her—"

            Rhodey rolled his eyes. "I told Rae you probably couldn't even _say_ the word 'boyfriend,' let alone _be_ one."

            "I resent that," I told him. "I can say a simple _word_. Boy." There was a long pause. "Friend."

            "Well done," Rhodey replied sarcastically. "No problems _there_."

            "Well Pepper doesn't mind doing all that stuff," I insisted. "She _likes_ it. She moved in with _me_ , remember?"

            "Actually, no, I _don't_ remember that," Rhodey shot back dryly, "and neither do you, since you didn't notice she was living with you for _two years_."

            I knew I would regret telling him that story. "My _point_ is, I'm not exploiting her or anything. I don't force her to feed me grapes while dangling passports for her parents and twelve siblings who are trying to escape some poverty-stricken nation, you know."

            Rhodey looked thoughtful. "Hmmmm, I hadn't considered _that_ …"

            "I mean, Pepper could always quit if she didn't like it," I told him. Then I grimaced and put a hand on my stomach.

            "Something wrong?"

            "Just felt kind of sick there," I reported, frowning.

            Rhodey snorted. "Probably the thought of Pepper leaving you."

            My stomach twitched again. "Stop it," I ordered him. "Let's talk about something else." I pressed the intercom button on my desk. "Pepper, get in here."

            " _Yes, sir_." She appeared through the doorway in all her icy, proper glory. "Can I get you something, sir?"

            "Yeah, bring me a club soda," I told her. "You want the rest of this reuben?" Rhodey smirked at me, but I ignored him.

            "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir." Pepper seemed pleased to acquire more food. She'd probably only had four meals so far that day. "I'll be right back with your club soda."

            "Thank you, Pepper."

* * *


End file.
